‘Funny Pages’ (2022)
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.
The Safdie brothers and their frequent collaborator Ronald Bronstein are among the producers of this debut feature from the writer and director Owen Kline, and their participation is telltale; if you can’t handle the sweaty, frenetic desperation of “Uncut Gems” or “Marty Supreme,” stay far away. But those whose appreciate their work will tune right in to this darkly funny and uncomfortably visceral tale of Robert, a high school senior and prickly professed genius (an excellent Daniel Zolghadri), who longs to be an underground comic book artist in the style of Robert Crumb. Kline creates a chaotic world around Robert, and a vivid ensemble of weirdos and eccentrics who crash into his orbit. Chief among them is Wallace (the priceless character actor Matthew Maher), who has actually worked in the industry, and ends up teaching Robert the hard and important lesson that sometimes people are outsiders and outcasts for a reason. Unapologetically truthful, wildly unpredictable and endlessly funny, it marks Kline as an exciting new voice in indie cinema.
‘BlackBerry’ (2023)
The best entry in the strange, recent mini-fad of movies about beloved products (like Air Jordans and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos), this adroit mixture of workplace comedy, character drama and corporate thriller was directed by Matt Johnson. The screenplay is by Johnson and Matthew Miller, who were also among the talents behind the recent comedy “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.” Johnson also co-stars as Doug Fregin, who, along with his best friend, Mike Lazaridis (the “Undeclared” star Jay Baruchel), develops the titular mobile computing device; “It’s Always Sunny” co-star Glenn Howerton is ferociously good as Jim Balsillie, who becomes their roaring, cutthroat partner with a brain for business. The specifics of the device and its brief cultural ubiquity provide momentary interest (and nostalgia), but the heart of “BlackBerry” lies in those three personalities, and how their vastly divergent approaches ultimately sour the company (and their relationships with each other).
‘Day of the Fight’ (2024)
The actor Jack Huston — the youngest member of the Huston acting and filmmaking dynasty — makes his debut feature as writer and director with this sentimental story of an underdog boxer’s one last shot. It’s a deliberate pastiche; rather than pretending that there haven’t been a million other boxing pictures, Huston leans into our awareness of them, lets us fill in the blanks, and bucks clichés when it matters most. Huston’s “Boardwalk Empire” co-star Michael Pitt, who’s acquired some hard lines in his baby face since that show’s run, is terrific as the one-time champ “Irish Mike” Flannigan, broken and wounded, haunted by his memories and mistakes, but determined to redeem himself. Huston dramatizes the big bout, of course, but per the title, “Day” is more about how Mike spends the hours beforehand, making apologies and putting his affairs in order, which makes it less a sports movie than a melodrama — and a tough, terse one at that.
‘Fackham Hall’ (2025)
The three-gags-a-minute spoof style perfected in the 1970s and 1980s by Mel Brooks and Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker is feeling ripe for a revival, thanks to last year’s hysterically funny reboot of ZAZ’s “Naked Gun” franchise and this uproarious sendup of British period dramas like “Downton Abbey” from the director Jim O’Hanlon. Thomasin McKenzie is delightfully game as Rose — “a dried-up husk of a woman” at 23, per her mother Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston) — who is meant to wed her loathsome first cousin Archibald (Tom Felton) but instead falls for servant Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe). Hilarity ensues, much of it via her father Lord Davenport, played by the “Homeland” and “Billions” star Damian Lewis, displaying a Leslie Nielsen-esque skill for straight-up silliness.
‘They Came Together’ (2014)
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.
Before last year’s crop, the most successful attempt to reanimate the Brooks/ZAZ playbook came via David Wain and Michael Showalter, members of the State comedy troupe and the minds (both wrote, Wain directed) behind this cheerfully merciless spoof of contemporary romantic comedies of the Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers ilk. They get a big assist from the film’s stars, Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd, as the enemies-to-lovers at the story’s center, while such comic heavy hitters as Bill Hader, Ed Helms, Ellie Kemper and fellow State alums Michael Ian Black and Ken Marino land big laughs in smaller roles.
‘Love+War’ (2025)
The “Free Solo” directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin return with another story of a life lived on the edge, this time profiling the American photojournalist Lynsey Addario, who has covered, for various outlets including The New York Times, some of the most heated and dangerous combat and conflicts of recent years. The danger and chaos of her work is given ample screen time, but the most compelling sections of this expert documentary are the quieter ones, in which Addario attempts to grapple with the demands her career places on her life as a wife and mother. Few of us have been kidnapped by insurgents, but we’ve all struggled to achieve a “work-life balance” — though you may hesitate to complain about yours after watching Addario tussle with hers.
‘Frank’ (2014)
Before directing the Oscar-winning “Room,” Lenny Abrahamson made this odd, lovely comedy-drama set in the world of indie music. Domhnall Gleeson is an office drone who makes an odd entrance into a band led by the title character, who spends his time, onstage and off, hidden in a large papier-mâché head. (Michael Fassbender is under that head, promise.) The peculiarities of Frank’s personality and persona — and the differences between them — provide much of the drama and conflict that follows, which Abrahamson dramatizes with a light touch that keeps the quirky premise from tipping into treacle.
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